


I'd Go The Whole Wide World

by honey_wheeler



Category: Voyagers! (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27059485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: So far, the women have only been perks. He’s never yet come across a problem that could be fixed by kissing, and more’s the pity. Sometimes he daydreams about it during idle hours (something they have plenty of, since being a Voyager can involve a whole lot of time waiting for history to start happening before it can be fixed). He imagines an endless series of problems that can only be solved with smiles and sweet words, with fingers and lips and tongues, with skirts pushed up, blouses pushed down, laces undone, buttons unbuttoned, in hay lofts and harems and speakeasies and front parlors. It seems unfair that history is always hinging on inventions and wars and science, none of which present much opportunity for pleasure or passion.
Relationships: Phineas Bogg/Women
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	I'd Go The Whole Wide World

Jeffrey has no patience for it. 

“Again?” he’ll complain when he turns around to find a woman in Bogg’s arms (of her own choosing, Phineas would point out – he rarely even has to ask once, let alone twice). It’s gotten so Bogg knows Jeffrey is rolling his eyes just by the way he says his name (usually when his own eyes are closed – a kiss isn’t worth doing if you don’t do it right). It has an extra syllable, a dip in tone halfway through: Bah- _ogg_ , like Jeffrey is trying to imitate a foghorn. He’s even started warning Bogg about it now. 

“We don’t have time for that,” said just as Phineas has caught some pretty young suffragette’s eye.

“Don’t even think about it, Bogg,” sighed when Phineas lets his hands linger after he’s helped Catherine the Great down from her horse.

‘How do you know what I’m thinking?” he’d demanded the first time Jeffrey had said it. 

“I see that look you get,” Jeffrey countered, and Bogg had studied his face in the reflection of a shop window after that, wondering what it was Jeffrey had seen. Wondering if he could cultivate it.

“Gross,” Jeffrey scowls the next time a woman turns her face up to Phineas’s to be kissed. She overhears and laughs. “He’s at that age,” she says, smiling up at Phineas, tugging on his lapels as if to ensure his attention doesn’t stray too far from her. 

Phineas laughs like he knows just what she means, but he really doesn’t. The only thing better than realizing how much he liked girls “at that age” was learning how much they liked him back.

***

He didn’t get into Voyaging to meet women, contrary to what Jeffrey sometimes claims. He’d gotten into it the way any other Voyager did, recruited much the way he’d been taken on as a cabin boy when he was young. One day he was running errands and dodging trouble on the docks, the next he was doing the same on a ship. All it took was being noticed by the right person at the right time (or the wrong ones, depending on perspective). He’d gotten into piracy the same way: his ship was boarded, his back was strong, someone saw something in him he’d never considered and yet again, his life was different but the same.

Life’s a lot easier if you’re good at rolling with the punches.

Maybe he wouldn’t have rolled so easily into becoming a Voyager if they’d sent a man, but they sent a woman – older, beautiful in a severe way (so unlike the women he’d known before, who were either genteel and beribboned or bawdy and disheveled, both of which he enjoyed greatly), tall enough to look him in the eye and strong-willed enough that she just seemed like a new sort of Captain to him.

“This is what you were always meant to be,” she’d told him, and the words just sounded right. 

When he took her hand, his skin prickled like the sky before a storm and her eyes had widened and then darkened in sudden awareness. He made up his mind to kiss her at some point (he did: last year of school, empty classroom, her panting that anyone could walk in on them but telling him not to stop).

“I’m in,” he’d said and was still holding her hand when they jumped.

***

So far, the women have only been perks. He’s never yet come across a problem that could be fixed by kissing, and more’s the pity. Sometimes he daydreams about it during idle hours (something they have plenty of, since being a Voyager can involve a whole lot of time waiting for history to start happening before it can be fixed). He imagines an endless series of problems that can only be solved with smiles and sweet words, with fingers and lips and tongues, with skirts pushed up, blouses pushed down, laces undone, buttons unbuttoned, in hay lofts and harems and speakeasies and front parlors. It seems unfair that history is always hinging on inventions and wars and science, none of which present much opportunity for pleasure or passion.

Come to that, it usually hinges on men too. Phineas knows better than most how ill-served by history women can be. He marvels at their resilience, despairs at their pain. He can’t save the ones that need it most (a hard pill to swallow, especially when he started out) so he gives them the only things he can: Admiration. Comfort. Diversion. Fun. A quick tumble, a wandering hand, a seeking tongue...

“What are you thinking about?” Jeffrey asks suspiciously when he catches Bogg with a dreamy look on his face, staring off into the distance.

“Maybe I’ll tell you when you’re older,” Bogg says.

***

Bogg has to admit that just about anyone else would probably be a better mentor for the kid than he is. Jeffrey asks a million questions – “Who picks the Voyagers, who invented the Omni, how do they know what to put in the Guidebook?” – that Bogg usually can’t answer.

“I didn’t pay attention to that stuff,” he says, even though it’s not strictly true. He’d tried. He’d even studied. He’s just always been better at acting than thinking, more quick-witted than smart. He lets Jeffrey believe he was too distracted by his female classmates, though. It’s easier than trying to explain.

Not that he’d ever send Jeffrey off to learn from someone else though, not unless Jeffrey wanted to go. Bogg isn’t sure when he started thinking of the kid as his for good, but he does. It’s nice having him around. That’s one thing he’s always been missing, no matter how many women he smiles at or kisses or makes love to: permanence. Bogg’s never had much in the way of family – an overworked mother, an absent father; a ship’s crew; school classmates. Jeffrey is about the closest thing he’s had. It makes up for the fact that having him around means way less opportunity to make any time.

***

“Did I ever tell you about the time a Sultana kept me captive for a week?” he asks one day. They’re killing an hour or so on the banks of a stream, Jeffrey washing his socks in the water and Bogg flipping through his favorite memories like they’re the pages of a book.

Jeffrey actually seems interested this time. He pauses in his washing and looks over at Bogg. “Did she take away your Omni?”

“What?” Phineas frowns at the question. “No. No, I had it.” Jeffrey frowns back at him.

“So why didn’t you use it to get out of there? What were you doing?” Realization dawns on his face and he rolls his eyes. “Let me guess, you’ll tell me when I’m older…”

Bogg grins. “Maybe,” he says. Maybe, but probably not. Some things, you have to keep to yourself.

***

A lot of things he definitely won’t ever tell Jeffrey. How Artemisia Gentileschi painted him nude. How Isadora Duncan taught him a sort of dance not fit for polite company. How Marie Antoinette had a long string of pearls that were the exact pale pink of her nipples. How Queen Lili’uokalani had once composed a bawdy song just for him on her ukulele. How hoop skirts on a woman are the best concealment when you’re kneeling under them, but panniers will work in a pinch. How the only sound sweeter than a woman laughing is her gasping in pleasure. How every one of them has a different smell, a different sound, a different taste, but they’re all good.

How his favorite one is always the next one.

***

It’s lonely work. Not quite so lonely now that he has Jeffrey, but still. Maybe that’s why Phineas falls at least a little bit in love with all of them. Maybe it’s easier to fall a little bit in love all the time when you know you’ll never be around long enough to have to make good on it.

Still. Sometimes it breaks his heart that he’ll never be around long enough to have to make good on it. Some women can break a heart like that, without even doing anything.

Some women can break your heart without even trying. They can break your heart even while you’re breaking theirs.

***

_Title from Whole Wide World by Wreckless Eric_


End file.
